“What about my backpiece?” Maxence demanded. “It’s my skin. I can have anything on my skin I want to.”
“Of course, you can, but you told me the tattoo on your back was of a fallen angel’s wings, a demon, maybe even Satan himself. I didn’t know why anyone who was a friend would design a tattoo likethatfor your back. That’s what you’re most afraid of about yourself, because you think you’re like your brother or some of the other members of your family, like Jules and Marie-Therese,but you’re not.Arthur designed your tattoo to be the wings of an angel becausethat’swhat your soul is.”
He turned back and towered over her, glaring down. “And how do you know that?”
Okay, time to come clean.“Because I cornered Arthur on the plane going to New Mexico and chewed him out for putting devil wings on your back.”
“Well, that explains that weird conversation in the barn.” Maxence spun away from her and rested his forearms on the sink countertop with his head in his hands. “Is thereanythingyou didn’t pry into?”
“Probably not, and I’ll probably never stop doing it. Nurses are trained to askallthe questions. I walked into rooms with people I’d never met before and asked them if they like to sleep with men or women or both or neither. I looked one guy straight in the eyes and asked him if he’d been screwing a sheep or a goat because it looked like he had ringworm, and that’s the only way he could get wool embedded in his pecker and a hoofprint-shaped bruise on his chest. I askedso many peoplehow that particular item had become lodged in that orifice, and I looked them right in their eyes to see if they were lying. I’ll ask anyoneanythingbecauseI love youand want to know every corner of your soul. And if what’s there isn’t perfect, I’ll love you anyway. But I’ll think you’re perfect, no matter what. Arthur putangel wingson your back, not demon wings, andthatmakes perfect sense to me.”
Maxence mumbled from where he crouched with his head on the counter. “Arthur designed it that way because he doesn’t know me. If he had, he would have made them Satan’s wings.”
Dree flung herself over Maxence’s back, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her cheek to the tattoo ink and scars on his spine. “That’s not true. If anything, he knows you better than you know yourself. You’re all wrapped up in the bull hockey Pierre told you all your life, but Arthurknowsyou.Iknow you, and you should never have satanic wings on your back. You should have had the wings of Archangel Gabriel on your skin becausethat’swho you are, andI know you.”
Maxence’s hand stole down and pressed her arms around his waist more firmly against the hard, stacked bricks of his abdominals.
Dree continued, “Mairearad said that she couldn’t and would never pursue a relationship with you because it’s unethical, and I believe her. At first, she talked in generalities, saying thatclientsdid this andclientsdid that.That’s why I thought she was a tattoo artist.But then she asked if you were all right, and she asked if you were ‘getting what you needed’ from me.”
Under her arm, thick muscles under Max’s skin expanded as he sighed.
“Mairearad said that the first day you came in where she worked, you’d slashed your arm with what looked like a razor blade that morning, and it broke her heart. It breaksmyheart just thinking about it.”
Maxence curled his fingers through hers, holding on, but he didn’t lift his head. Dree would’ve felt it where her cheek pressed against his warm skin.
She said, “I’m not going to threaten to leave you. I told you I would always come back for you and I would always be there for you, andhere I am.But I’m your friend, and I’m a nurse practitioner, so I’m telling you this isn’t healthy. You need to talk to someone about why you’re cutting.”
“I’m notcutting. I’m nota cutter,”Maxence whispered.
“We don’t have to make a noun out of it. But you’re doing it. Cutting is usually a sign of depression or anxiety, or both, or a couple of other things. The pain releases hormones to overcome shock and suppress cortisol and other stress responses. You’re doing it for a reason, andyou’re making me do it.”
“I’m not forcing you to do anything,” he whispered.
“Maxence, you’re good at manipulating me into getting too rough and tearing into your skin, but I don’t want to be manipulated anymore.You don’t have to.You can tell me that you want it rough, and I’ll give you what you need. You don’t have totrickme. You just have totellme.”
Maxence lifted his head and tilted it like he was looking at her where she stood behind him. Over his back, she could see how his head moved in the wide bathroom mirror. “But you wouldn’t want to do that.”
Dree bit her lip, thinking. “I wouldn’t want to hurt you just to hurt you, but when you drive me crazy like that, I can’t help myself sometimes. You get rough, and then I do, too. And then I feel soguiltyafterward. I’ve been scrubbing blood out from underneath my fingernails and feeling like crap about it. I hated myself. But if it’s what youwant,then I don’t have to feel guilty about being so out of control that I’m clinging to you, and my hands clench.”
He straightened and turned around, his body twisting in her arms. “But you don’t want to do it. Surely, you don’t.”
“You kind of taught me to do it, or conditioned me, but you brought out something that was always there.I’m an ER nurse,buddy. I feel no remorse about sticking needles into people, or manipulating their broken limbs, or sewing their skin back together, or yelling at them over their screams. We hurt to heal, Max. It’s part of my job, andyou can’t shock me.Trust me on that one.”
He watched her, not speaking.
She continued, “I grew up on afarm.Farm work takes mental fortitude. I fell into a snarl of barbed wire once, untangled it and pulled the rusty barbs out of my arms and legs, and told my mother to take me to the free clinic for a tetanus shot. When a sheep bites you, you get faster about moving out of the way. I was always the one who had to stick my hand into a ewe who was having trouble lambing because I’ve got skinny little arms. I’m not queasy aboutanything.As long as you’re not abusing the sheep or doing stuff to people who haven’t consented,” she shrugged, “yeah, sure. Whatever.I’ve seen more.”
“But that doesn’t mean youwantto,” Maxence said.
“If I didn’t want to, if I weren’t up for it, it would have never happened in the first place, ever. They’re my fingernails. When you get rough,I like it,and then I get that way, too. I like the intensity. If we agree and we understand, neither one of us needs to feel bad about what we both like.”
Maxence stared at her, then blinked and looked at the bathroom walls and ceiling, breaking their eye contact and the shocking intimacy of the moment.
Dree held him more tightly around his waist. “The day before I met you, you rescued a woman who was in an abusive relationship, and you faced one ofyour worst fearsto get her out of Monaco in the quickest way possible. When you found me in Paris, I needed rescuing, too, and you did it again. But even when we were standing under that streetlight by the Buddha Bar, I remember you looking at my hands. I’d just had a manicure because I was going to Paris for the first time. Your cortisol and stress hormones must’ve been sky-high after being on two different yachts for hours and hours and nearly being taken again. Youneededit that night, didn’t you?”
He nodded.
“And after we saw those guys following us near the Eiffel Tower that night?”
